By Luisa Freitas and Abiodun Salako
The Integrated Programmes (IPs) enable the GEF to address a wide range of environmental drivers within a single programme, creating opportunities to deliver greater and more lasting environmental benefits. The reach and ambition of these initiatives expanded substantially throughout GEF-8, securing USD 1.66 billion in direct GEF funding alongside USD 11.3 billion in co-financing.
GEF-9’s Technical Advisory Group has pushed to sharpen efficiency and impact, proposing improvements that take on multiple drivers at once to maximise synergies and avoid trade-offs, foster nature-positive pathways in country-level planning, promote blended finance to leverage additional resources, and strengthen policy coherence across sectors and institutions.
The eight proposed IPs for GEF-9 are Critical Forest Biomes, Global Wildlife for Development, Blue and Green Islands, Food Systems, Drylands and Drought Management, Sustainable Cities, Circular Solutions to Plastics Pollution, and Pollution-free Supply Chains. This piece explores each IP, beginning with critical forest biomes and sustainable cities, and examines how their priorities are shaping approaches to environmental finance.
Critical forest biomes
Tropical and subtropical forests hold more carbon per hectare than almost any other ecosystem, regulate freshwater supply for entire river basins, and anchor the livelihoods and cultural identity of the Indigenous Peoples and local communities who live in them. Conserving these ecosystems in their primary form is thus crucial to achieving climate and conservation goals. However, according to the Global Forest Watch, from 2002 to 2023, a total of 76.3 million hectares of humid primary forest was lost globally. Due to various local and global factors, threats to forests are increasing and impacting remote areas of high integrity forests. Although agricultural expansion remains the main driver of deforestation, other factors, such as infrastructure development and mining operations, also need to be addressed simultaneously.
Based on this current context, the GEF-9 Critical Forest Biomes IP aims to maintain, preserve and restore the integrity of tropical forest biomes, investing in conservation and governance across five regions: the Amazon, Congo Basin, Mesoamerica, Guinean Forests, and Southeast Asia and the Pacific. It sits mainly under the Biodiversity and Climate Change Focal Areas, while also addressing Land Degradation through sustainable land management and targeted restoration.
Participating countries will work to halt deforestation and support the Global Biodiversity Framework’s Target 3, which aims to protect 30 per cent of land and sea by 2030, while expanding coverage and improving the management of protected and conservation areas across the five forest biomes. The programme applies cost-effective nature-based solutions, including support for conservation-friendly livelihoods, and promotes land-use planning that contributes to GBF’s Target 1, so that competing demands don’t come at the expense of primary forest. Where restoration serves biodiversity and forest integrity, particularly through biological corridors, the IP supports that too, contributing to GBF’s Target 2, alongside policy coherence work that curbs the institutional incentives still driving deforestation.
The IP puts Indigenous Peoples, local communities and women at the centre of decisions on land rights, land management and policy, and regulatory frameworks, and it opens the door to private capital through results-based payments, de-risking mechanisms and blended finance instruments.
Sustainable cities
Cities occupy a small share of the Earth’s land surface but generate a disproportionate share of global environmental pressures, accounting for more than 70 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. By 2050, around 68 per cent of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas, with much of this growth concentrated in Africa and Asia. City governments understand the barriers well, such as fragmented land-use decisions, limited institutional capacity, constrained access to finance, and insufficient engagement with the residents and businesses who shape how cities develop.
The GEF-9 Sustainable Cities IP extends a programme that has operated since GEF-6, delivered through the World Bank-led Global Platform for Sustainable Cities with WRI, C40 and ICLEI, and now connected to the GEF-7 UrbanShift platform led by UNEP. GEF-9 expands its focus to the urban-rural interface and the resource sheds, including water, food and energy, that sustain cities. It also incorporates country-level planning from the former Net-Zero Nature-Positive Accelerator programme, ecosystem restoration priorities now embedded across GEF-9’s Integrated Programmes, and infrastructure and wastewater work previously covered by two other GEF-8 programmes.
Participating countries will strengthen urban governance and integrated planning at national and sub-national levels, while investing in nature-positive, climate-resilient and carbon-neutral urban infrastructure. Much of that ambition rests on mobilising private investment in cities through new financing models and on reducing urban wastewater and land-based pollution before it reaches coastal and freshwater systems. Cities will also need to plan for the food, water, and energy resources on which they depend, using four entry points: land-use planning, infrastructure, nature and biodiversity, and circular-economy solutions. Global knowledge platforms will help connect cities so that approaches proven in one place can be adapted and scaled elsewhere.
E Co’s track record across both programmes
E Co. has supported international agencies and international financing institutions in developing complex environmental and climate projects, from early project concepts through to funding approval, mid-term assessment and implementation. This work includes investment proposal development, technical assessments, stakeholder engagement, and coordination of the various inputs needed to build a strong project.
In Mesoamerica, E Co. supported the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in developing three child projects in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, alongside the regional coordination project for the Mesoamerica Critical Forest Biome IP. E Co. led the CEO Endorsement Request process for each country, covering ecological and socio-economic assessments, safeguard consultations and validation workshops with government ministries and IUCN. The regional coordination project and the Honduras and Guatemala projects were approved by the GEF in October 2024, followed by El Salvador in January 2025. All four projects are now under implementation.
Our urban cities portfolio spans a similarly broad range of work. In the Russian Federation, E Co. supported the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) – an IFC we have extensively worked with – in developing two GEF-funded projects on urban housing and public building efficiency, including an integrated municipal planning approach, regulatory support and a financing model to enable replication across cities. In Malaysia, E Co. supported UNIDO in preparing the CEO Endorsement Document for the Sustainable-City Development project, working with the Malaysian Industry Government Group for High Technology and the national GEF Focal Point.
Moreover, in Bhutan, E Co. led the CEO Endorsement Request and Project Document for UNDP’s climate resilience project covering Thimphu and Paro, including the climate vulnerability assessment that informed the project design. Additionally, in Kazakhstan, E Co. supported UNDP’s low-carbon urban development NAMA, while in Uganda, the team supported integrated waste management and biogas plans across Kampala, Jinja, Mbarara and Mbale.
If you are developing projects under GEF-9’s Critical Forest Biomes or Sustainable Cities integrated programmes, we would be glad to support that work. Get in touch with our GEF focal points, Marion Denates at marion@ecoltdgroup.com and Anne Gander at anne@ecoltdgroup.com.
